Lotus Cafe and Cardroom

Great place! Today I went for happy hour and ordered the loaded nachos. For cocktails I had the grapefruit and basil martini and Spanish coffee. Both were delicious. Service was fast and friendly.

Costumer service was terrible. We came in on a Friday at about 10pm and there was literally 6 tables with patrons. With such few people you would think the two bartenders working would be able handle this. I was wrong. When we walked in we sat ourselves down and watched as the bartender ignored us by putting dishes away and cleaning the bar. When she finally noticed us she came over and her attitude was horrible. The 2^nd bartender was MIA most of the time we were there. Won’t be coming back.

Excellent food and service. One of my favorite places to have lunch in downtown Portland. I have been there many times and have never had an issue.

Best Arugula Beet salad … with hazelnuts. Delightful combination of fresh salad, Chevre cheese, beets… Lindsay was knowledgable about the city. We got great tips on where to go and what to see.
Waiting for our desert of a hazelnut brownie with ice-​cream… I can already smell it.

This review is for the late night happy hour.
I have to say, I’m pretty impressed by the happy hour here. The food is good, and the beer on tap is great. Our group had 7 beers, loaded tots, chicken strips, and fries for less than $ 50.
The only drawback for us was the lack of available seating for a group of 4. It was a Friday night though so I get it.
The tots were SO GOOD!

This restaurant is literally across the street from my office. When I ate there today, I remembered why I hadn’t been there in over a year. We were seated in the recently redecorated back room. What is the purpose of having chairs as tall as bar stools so your feet don’t touch the ground? So people don’t get too comfortable and order a second drink?
The menu is also remodeled, and though it doesn’t note offerings geared for special diets like many other food venues in Portland, it looked fresh and interesting. Unfortunately, the beet salad I ordered did not meet that description. No restaurant should ever serve wilted lettuce, and mine was already a day or two beyond wilted. And the beets I expected to be freshly roasted better represented canned beets.
The service was good for our group of 10 at straight up noon, and we were served and billed within an hour which is why I gave a rating of 3. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for me to want to return.

This place is awesome. Mark, our bartender was extremely courteous, and Anna, who has worked there 40 years entertained with stories of the places history. The food is great, and who doesn’t like having a cocktail at a bar that was reclaimed from a whore house?

Went there for happy hour and found a table up front. Our waitress was awesome and so friendly! I ordered the black bean quesadilla and kale salad. Be aware the black bean quesadilla only has like 3 beans :/​and the kale salad is very spicy! I would totally get the salad again but not the quesadilla. I also got a beer on tap which paired nice with the salad.

If the baristas would pay more attention to producing better customer service than moving the line, maybe I wouldn’t have rated it poorly.
First off, I wasn’t even looking for this place, nor had the desire to come in. But, it was raining & the café I was looking for wasn’t orienting on my maps. I wish it did! Because I wasted $ 4.00 on this place. First off, the latte was poorly made. The shot was weak & it was far below luke warm.
I will never recommend this place to any of my friends and family back home. Absolutely horrible & far too stuck-​up to pay attention to the quality of service/​food they produce…

It was A-​OK. You actually wouldn’t expect the interior to be so big from the outside. There was a cool vibe, and it was pretty loud and packed during happy hour. Lots of seating in the bar and restaurant.
Our services was okay. We ordered sliders and they forgot them, so we ended up just having fries and beers then left. The loaded tots looked excellent from other people ordering so I wish we would’ve got those. I will be back to try the other food on the menu.
Overall decent prices for what you get.

I great menu, great food, great atmosphere, great drinks, great service. Great place for conversations.

For a Last minute food stop on our way out of town, this proved to be some of the best food we had in Portland. Everything was fantastic, including the service. I had the spicy mac&che, which was DYNAMITE!!! The ceviche we opened with was offset nicely by a glass of mirror pond, in our mirrored corner booth. I tried m’lady’s meatloaf sandwich, in all it’s bacon wrapped glory… Yum! And I’m not a meatloaf kinda guy, at all. + it came with tots, so you can’t go wrong.
Badass stop, I’m super glad we found it!

It seems like my husband and I walked by this place a few times during dinner hours, and it didn’t seem like they were open. So, we were pleased to find them open one beautiful Friday evening, and we were able to sit outside. We were even more pleased by the great service, the gorgeous bar area, and the incredible food!!! I guess it was a slow evening, so our server was also the bartender. Based on my tastes he recommended the Blood Orange Margarita, and it rocked! The Tuscan Kale Salad with Currants & Almonds sounded amazing to me, and it was! My husband also loved his Garlic Herb Crusted Steak, served over smashed red potatoes, with a side of fresh veggies (green beans in this case). It may not look like much from the outside, but this place is definitely worth a visit!

The Lotus is a place I have been for happy hour many times before continuing on to my final destination of The Keller Auditorium. I would have rated this place as 2 stars based my past experiences. I always remember the service being so slow. Hard to order drinks and food, an eternity to get a check dropped at your table.
Yesterday I had a meeting at the Portland Building so I gave The Lotus another try for happy hour. I’m not sure if they have actually stepped up their service game, or if we just lucked out and got a fantastic server.
I ordered a grapefruit cosmo that was SO tasty! (If you enjoy greyhounds it is a must try!) They had three hard ciders to choose from for my second drink.
Their happy hour food is great. Yesterday we went with the calamari and we were far from disappointed.
I really hope the service has changed overall for the better because this bar is in a great location and has a stellar happy hour menu.

Awesome happy hour (both after work and late nights) and cocktails! Order the Moscow Mule. Trust me.
The wait staff is really friendly and gives great service. I’ve been in here a few times and they have been consistently great, the food has been delicious, and the drinks strong.

One of my primary expectations of a restaurant is that they are preparing food with skill, ingredients, and taste that I cannot reproduce at home.
I’ve found on more than one occasion that the food here is fairly average, and about what I can do at home. I had the Asian chicken salad at lunch today, but it was just salad with some chicken on top and a couple of mandarin oranges with some rice noodles for good measure. Easy peasey.
For the $ 12-​$ 18 per plate at lunch, I would expect some higher end food and preparation.
I like the rustic appearance of the place, but the booths are high backed wood and not comfortable.
Many friends and coworkers love it here, but I’ve just never been impressed.

Loved their happy hour, and for many months that was the only experience I had with the Lotus. The first happy hour they had cider on tap, which was fantastic because I don’t like beer, but they haven’t had cider on tap since then. They should bring that back! The first time I couldn’t decide what well drink I wanted, the bartender was very creative and made up a vodka strawberry lemonade (with house-​made strawberry lemonade!) It was delicious. Happy hour food is good too: I recommend the calamari, nachos, or the caesar salad.
I finally tried them for dinner after they sent me a card good for free (free!) dinner for two. I took a friend and we got two free entrees — she got a steak and I got salmon. Both were delicious, as were the vegetables on the side. We also got bread pudding for desert, which was tasty, but not as good as the entrees. We also got cocktails, both were grapefruit-​flavored. I think mine was a grapefruit cosmo and hers was a grapefruit martini. I liked the cosmo better, but both were very enjoyable.
Finally, the service was pleasant. When we had dinner, the waitress was very nice when we wanted to move from a table to an available booth (in fact, I think she offered us the booth so we could hear our conversation better.) I’ll be going back, especially if there are more free dinners.

Rumor has it this place was not only a cardroom but also a brothel back in the day. This is one of those historic Portland institutions. The bar is dark and intimate, with a magnificent, gargantuan wooden bar with huge inset mirror-​the kind 19^th century west coast proprietors have shipped from Boston around Cape Horn because the Panama Canal hasn’t been built yet. I don’t know if this bar is from the northeast or not. I’m just saying it looks like that kind of bar.
There is an odd diner counter towards the back, with old school (50s) diner spinning bar seats covered in naugahide. Its incongruous – a throwback to a remodel of yore that is itself antique but doesn’t match the period of the bar itself. No one ever ever ever sits there. But the kitchen is there.
Food is decent. Cocktails are quite good, bordering on fancy pants on some cases.
Great happy hour.

I understand that the Lotus Café has a long, colorful history in Portland and who am I, a transplant, to judge such a place? Well I’m a Unilocaler so it’s my hobby. I’ve passed by this place several times, but this was the first time I’ve gone in, as I was meeting a colleague for lunch and the restaurant/​bar was close to both our offices. I’m on a quest to find the best burger in town and someone suggested the maple bacon, blue cheese, and cheddar burger here.
Upon walking in I was struck by how large and well preserved the inside is. The outside is pretty rundown and I was expecting the same for inside. However, there are actually really nice wooden booths and a polished wooden bar. Additionally, there were really cool vintage pictures of yee olde Portland to check out. The service was here was great. My companion and I were seated immediately and had drinks served quickly afterwards. The wait between ordering and receiving our food was short and our sodas were filled promptly.
Sadly all this really can’t make up for the mediocre food. I ordered the maple bacon, blue cheese, and cheddar with tots and my companion got the grilled chicken Caesar salad. My burger came on a ciabatta bun that was flavorless and soggy. It was like the ciabatta bread you get at Jack in the Box. The bacon was dreadful as well. It was candied in a way that made it soft and sticky. It was like an old, slightly melted jolly rancher. The blue cheese and horseradish were pretty much completely unnoticeable. I’m not sure how horseradish cream can have no kick to it at all. Even Arby’s horsey sauce has more flavor. For $ 13 with a side of tots, I feel cheated.
I’d give this place 1 star for food, 5 stars for ambiance and service, so three star average. I would come back here, but only for the bar. It looks like a good place to get after work drinks in the downtown area. You can’t mess up a pint and there’s a nice vibe in the bar.

I started hanging out at this bar when I was 21 years old. It was THE place to see and been seen. My friends parents were shocked to hear that the Lotus has such longevity, since it was where they hung out when they were younger.
I have no idea how good the food is, because I’d always had too much to drink to remember what I ordered, much less how it tasted. I’d chalk it up to reasonably priced bar food fare. That was a long time ago though. These days, I much more appreciate food and make a point to savor it — as well as remember it.
For the past 10 years, my friend has hosted his annual Halloween party at the Lotus. The place would get packed wall to wall, but the event was always very well staffed and the libations were always flowing at a rapid pace. It was the perfect place to have his party since they have a dance floor and the DJ always played current hits.
The storage area downstairs and rooms above are rumored to be haunted (they say it used to be a brothel), so if that’s your thing, it’s worth checking out — just to get a supernatural feel.
The bar also has video poker for those who have too much money in their pockets.
This place holds nostalgia for me, so for that reason alone, it’s somewhere I will continue to frequent.